Music: Balm for the Mind

By Codi Yeager
Sun contributor
Only around 20 people sat in the small, flag-decorated hall at The Leelanau School on June 8. The doors, open to the summer afternoon, ushered in only a tiny breeze, but the small audience focused not on the heat. Their attention was on the young pianists whose muscle-memory fingers whizzed across the keys to release the joy of Mozart, the passion of Bach and the haunting melodies of Chopin. It was the culmination of another year of musical dedication, and from the rookies to the seasoned veterans, the pupils of Yvonne Daly once again earned the mom-baked cookies that waited at the end of their performance.

Many of the students have been playing for years, and the end-of-the-year program was nothing unusual, whereas others, such as Chloe Gribbin, only began playing this past January. Chloe, who plays the trumpet in the Glen Lake High School Band, has “always liked the piano. It looked so fun to do, and it’s a lot more relaxing than the trumpet,” she says.
Playing musical instruments in general, and especially the piano, “takes stress away,” explains Yvonne, a longtime piano instructor, “it’s a change in pace after a busy day; a departure from the job or school that lets you get out of that world and have time to yourself.”
After working on a piece of music for a time, there is a period of pure release when “you have it figured out and it all goes smoothly. You can play it easily because you’re just playing it for fun,” says Maura Niemisto, a student of Yvonne’s for 11 years.
This is the feeling that the teacher encourages her students to strive for, when “they can enjoy it instead of making it a labor.” Yvonne’s ‘playing for fun’ approach to piano lets her do what she loves, which is “helping young people discover the emotional and musical side of the music. It’s fun to see everyone grow musically because everyone develops differently,” she says.
Yet piano does more than offer a refuge from daily troubles: it exercises both the mind and body in ways that aren’t accomplished by any other pursuit. Yvonne says that there is a “section of the brain that gets developed that doesn’t otherwise. It’s been shown to help in math and science.” Many of her former students have gone into technical fields such as engineering, and one even attended Harvard Medical School and is now a cardiologist.
Dane Hillard, whose last performance as Yvonne’s student was the program at Leelanau School in early June, will follow this path when he attends the University of Michigan this fall to major in Computer Science. Dane’s musical experiences are vast, as he also plays guitar, saxophone, bass and drums, but “piano is the basis of everything,” he says. Though he is not pursuing a career in music, Dane says he plans on “definitely continuing piano just for fun. The things I’m into, like math and science — they’re all in the same part of the brain as piano. If you do one, it helps the others.”
Playing the piano uses hands, muscles, eyes, ears, everything all together in a way that the body doesn’t do on its own, and, as another student, Stephen Wurst, explains, it is truly a “workout for the mind,” albeit, an enjoyable workout that is made even more enjoyable when taught by Yvonne.
“She’s a good teacher, she’s funny, she’s got quite the personality,” says Chloe. Noted for her sense of humor and interesting stories, Yvonne herself began playing at the age of five. Taught by her mother, who was a concert pianist, she went on to attend the American Conservatory in her hometown of Chicago, and then Northwestern University for music. Her family had been coming to Glen Lake “since before I was born,” Yvonne remembers. “It started when my uncle got hay fever and the doctor told him to head north. He went to Little Traverse Lake at first, but then they heard about Glen Lake and took the horse and wagon over and fell in love with the place.” After that, they came up every summer and “my mother bought the land I’m on now.”
Later, her music would take Yvonne to the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, where she taught piano and music theory at a newly formed music academy. “I was the only American and the only woman,” she remembers, and was in charge of “two choirs: a children’s choir of 40 voices and an adult choir of 40 voices.” During her three-year stay, Yvonne took part in a trio on a radio program called Leche Polvo (“powdered milk” in English) and also met her husband. She was married in Traverse City and then moved to Pittsburgh and taught piano to about 40 students there. After the death of her husband, Yvonne says she, “decided to move back to Glen Lake, teach whoever was around, and spend the rest of my life here.”
She has done just that, sharing her talent with those who wish to learn and continuing her legacy of music. Most of the students she now teaches perform once or twice a year in the Leelanau School hall, happy to play a piece or two for family and friends, while others perform and play simply for “the sheer enjoyment of being able to do it,” says Yvonne. The wonderful part is that piano is there for everyone, no matter how old or young, and it is a skill that can provide pleasure for a lifetime.